Vietnamese gambling addicts driven to extremes in order to repay debts

HANOI -- Drowning in debt and hunted by his bookmaker, a Vietnamese man dug a cave beneath his kitchen and hid there for two months, showing the desperate lengths illegal gambling addicts will go to in the communist nation.

Apart from a state-run lottery and a few foreigner-only casinos, betting is banned in Vietnam, but the law is widely flouted and every soccer World Cup or European Championship prompts a surge in illegal gambling rings, police say.

Creative minds have also devised a way of using the official lottery as the basis for an illegal game known as lo-de, where punters predict the last two lotto numbers of the standard daily draw.

It was playing lo-de that Nguyen Van Thinh lost 1.3 billion dong (US$62,000) — a fortune for the 41-year-old construction worker, who eventually had to sell his Hanoi house in order to pay his creditors.

"It was really a guerilla life," he told AFP of his subterranean months, when he survived on food and water brought by his wife.

And Thinh's tale of addiction is far from unique in Vietnam, a country of about 86 million people. Each of its 63 provinces has an official lottery — and with it an unofficial lo-de game.

"Lo-de has ruined hundreds of thousands of families and is tearing apart the fabric of our society," said Vo Quang Hung of the Hanoi police's anti-crime squad, adding that it had resulted in cases of suicide and divorce.

Despite the scale of the problem, there are no support groups such as Gamblers Anonymous for addicts to turn to for help.

Since the government moved to limit access to credit at the start of 2011 to rein in double-digit inflation, gamblers have found it harder to borrow from the banks to repay their bookmakers.

As a result, punters turn to unofficial lenders, who often hire thugs to collect valuables or even seize houses from gamblers who have fled when they cannot meet their payments.

Driven to the Brink of Suicide

Other indebted gamblers voluntarily turn themselves in to the police, preferring to risk fines or even prison terms for illegal betting rather than violence at the hands of their loan sharks or bookmakers.

"A dozen of my neighbors have fled this summer. Some have gone overseas after declaring themselves bankrupt. They can't come back until all their debts have been settled," cafe owner Nguyen Thi Thu told AFP.

The 36-year-old, who recognizes she is a gambling addict, has run into her own betting-related financial difficulties.

"I was driven to it by my creditors, my back was against the wall — I was going to kill myself to save my family. But thankfully, God had pity on me," said Thu, whose in-laws lent her more than US$120,000 to repay her debts.

In this picture taken on July 16, a lottery vendor handles a "lo-de" ticket along a street in Hanoi. Creative minds have devised a way of using the official lottery as the basis for an illegal game known as lo-de, where punters predict the last two lotto numbers of the standard daily draw.